Again, the antis lie by omission. Almost all of the 600 "homicides", I believe are justifiable ones.

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HandyMan Hugh D.H.M.D.
NRA Life Member/Certified Pistol Instructor Remember when seconds count the police are just minutes away! As good as they are, They can't be everywhere at once!

Iíve read through this and researched more into this case. Do you know anything about the civil case? Based on the comments it appears it had pretrial briefs due on 2/25/12. I am interested in learning more about it.

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"In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them." - Sun Tzu

Iíve read through this and researched more into this case. Do you know anything about the civil case? Based on the comments it appears it had pretrial briefs due on 2/25/12. I am interested in learning more about it.

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Seems to have dropped off the radar. Don't know if that is good news or bad.

There is a lot of confusion on these laws with names such as "stand your ground" or "make my day." My understanding is that these variations of the Castle Rule address upon whom the onus of proof shall be placed.

The person using deadly force will be assumed to have acted reasonably unless the evidence indicates otherwise. Prior to the passage of the various laws, the person using deadly force was assumed to have acted criminally if he did not have proof that he attempted to run away. While this may have been adequately cleared up in trial, it still resulted in devastating expenses and loss of freedom of the acquitted people.

I believe the new laws placed a threshold above which the evidence must be before the case would be permitted to go to trial. This was expected to limit the frivolous pursuit of marginal cases some prosecutors would through at the court, hoping something would stick. It does not change the elements of what constitutes guilt in the criminal sense. It just forces the prosecutor to have a viable case before attempting to criminally charge a defendant.

There has been something of an attempt to bend or twist the intention behind these laws. The famous case dealing with the shooting of the unarmed teenager is a poor example of what the law is about. The issue there is a lack of witnesses besides the one that survived. Both the teenager and the shooter were allowed to be where they were. If the shooter started the fight and shot once he was losing, everything changes. However, this would have to be proven. Supposedly, the prosecutor left out key information when seeking trial in order to get above the threshold. The whole thing is going to be a painful process. The shooter was new to concealed carry and lacked the skills to deal with or avoid physical conflict. Due to his lack of preparedness, the last resort of deadly force was the only force he could bring to the fight.

The retired fireman that killed his neighbor completely misunderstood what the law way about. He seemed to have believed the distortions thrown about by the mass media. There is no "stand your ground" when you initiate the violent conflict. In this case, there were many witnesses and the shooter actually recorded his crime, thinking it would be used in his defense. Clearly, the shooter was very confused and another man lost his life celebrating his wife's birthday.

The above two cases do not clearly show what the "stand your ground" laws are about. Look at the case where the 14 year old boy shot a home intruder. He took reasonable precautions by not answering the door when the criminal has his female accomplice knock on the door. When the male criminal attempted to break in, the 14 year old got the younger children to a safer area, armed himself and directly stopped the threat by shooting the intruder. The assumption is that the boy was reasonably believing that he and his siblings' were in danger of death or great bodily harm. The facts presented do not meet the threshold to even consider a trial.

I love the reference in the artlcle to the former Monitor writer, Mr. Rogers, who apparently has had numerous loaded firearms pointed at his head. Perhaps if he had armed himself somewhere along the line, he could have handled those situations differently instead of giving us the bleeding-heart, gun violence is scary, gun-control is the only way to solve the worlds problems BS. I'm sick of it.

I love the reference in the artlcle to the former Monitor writer, Mr. Rogers, who apparently has had numerous loaded firearms pointed at his head. Perhaps if he had armed himself somewhere along the line, he could have handled those situations differently instead of giving us the bleeding-heart, gun violence is scary, gun-control is the only way to solve the worlds problems BS. I'm sick of it.

Seems like a change of tactics is needed.

Stop illegal gun violence.

Encourage legal gun violence. Which will certainly help the first goal.

The long-accepted “duty to retreat” standard allows time and opportunity for violence to be avoided. “Stand your ground” may demand a split-second decision that even trained law-enforcement officers find challenging, and invites tragedy.

This implies that retreating, under "Stand Your Ground" laws, is somehow eliminated from the equation altogether. It doesn't "demand" anything of the people. You are still free to retreat. You just don't have the obligation.

__________________Thomas Paine: "...arms...discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. ...Horrid mischief would ensue were (the law-abiding) deprived the use of them."

Lumping justifiable homicide into the Murder category is one of the four great statistical distortions commonly used in the firearms restriction movement. The other three:

- Counting a gunshot death of a 17-thru-19-year-old as a "child" shooting death.
- Lumping a shooting of a casual acquaintance in with the classification of shooting of a "friend or family member".
- Classification of a firearm owned by a resident victim of a shooting as "firearm used against the resident", even if that firearm does not even figure in the incident.

Pisses me off when they say he's going to trial for the murder of "Mr. Martin". First off, it hasn't been proven that Zimmerman murdered the punk, innocent until proven guilty, and calling Trayvon "Mr. Martin" is showing him respect that no one should assume he deserves.

This guys whole article is one lie after another. He twists facts and falsifies studies. He is definitely anti-gun and anti-stand your ground. He obviously thinks that criminals should be protected. He certainly doesn't want you and other honest citizens to be able to protect themselves, and possibly others.

The most likely truth is that they neither help nor hurt in any statistically significant way.

What's the % of the population that routinely carries a pistol? Pretty small. That's going to be the % of the robberies/crimes where carrying a weapon has the possibility of changing the outcome. Something around 3% for Michigan.

Now out of those 3%, what percentage of those cases did stand your ground play a role? That would be the % of cases where there was a shooting because of SYG laws, where the carrier would have tried to retreat without SYG laws.

Not to mention the difficulty of getting any data to support that, as SYG laws often coincide with switching to Shall Issue. So there's generally a much smaller % of the population armed BEFORE SYG goes into effect. Extrapolation from such small numbers is generally not so reliable.

I believe that the people with enough grit to stand their ground to begin with would probably stand their ground anyway. I doubt that "stand your ground" legislation has emboldened any relatively passive people. so my answer is nah, I doubt it effects statistics to any real measurable degree.. Just a laymans opinon of course.

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"I believe that the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed if liberty in America is to survive." - Ronald Reagan